The Dances of India: A Primer

This is an issue that has come up 3 times in the last week, and I now realize that for people new to Bharatanatyam, this is not obvious. So allow me to clarify:

Bharatanatyam is not a social or recreational dance. What you're thinking of is Bollywood and/or Bhangra.

The simplest analogy I have: Bharatanatyam is to Bollywood as ballet is to swing dance. Bharatanatyam is not something you pick up in a few classes to have some fun moves to show off at a night club. It took me 3 months just to be able to sit in aramandi, the basic stance. More non-Indians than not have told me that the neck movements of Bharatanatyam (called atami) creep them out, so this is definitely not the sexy-town attraction dance you're probably going for.

To further clarify, here's a brief and incomplete run down of the dances of India:

Bharatanatyam

Obviously, the best form of dance from India.

More seriously, it's a form of classical dance, meaning the movements are precise and highly organized. It has both prescribed steps and a whole vocabulary of expression and gestures to communicate with the audience.

It is from the state of Tamil Nadu

It's highly religious in theme and is held in very high esteme within the Hindu community.

Rama Vaidyanathan: Badass of Bharatanatyam

This is not a dance you do for kicks at a club, although I kind of want to try that sometime. It's also definitely not something you dabble in.

Bollywood

As my dance teacher describes it:

"an amalgam of classical, folk, popular dance, western movement, etc. where anything that the director pleases is adopted"[1]

It's mostly for fun. It's not about precision or exact positions. It's the Indian equivalent of hip hop, and increasingly, includes a lot of hip hop.

If it's on a train, it's definitely Bollywood

When people ask me where they can learn some of the dance I do to perform at the first Indian wedding they're attending, this is usually what they're mistaking Bharatanatyam for.

There are lots of classes in Bollywood all over the Bay Area and everywhere else, but I don't know anything about them beyond that.

Bhangra and other Indian Folk Dances

Another increasingly popular form of Indian social dance is Bhangra. It comes from the Punjab region in India/Pakistan and has a lot of characteristic shoulder shaking. The 'pet-the-dog-and-screw-in-the-lightbulb' is Bhangra.

There are other forms of folk dance. Garba is another popular one. It comes from Gujarat, a Western state that's next to Punjab, and there are big Garba events everywhere there are Gujuratis, including the Bay Area. Dandiya is another Gujurati folk dance, but it involves sticks.

Other Forms of Classical Dance

There's pretty much a different classical dance for each region. Some of them are similar to Bharatanatyam, like Odissi and Kuchipudi. They are both from states near Tamil Nadu (Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, respectively).

Kathak is a form of classical dance prominent in the north. It's similar to some of the dances of Persia and the middle east. It's more upright and involves a lot of spinning (think Whirling Dervishes).

Kathak sequence from Devdas

Possibly the least like Bharatanatyam is Manipuri. It comes from the north east of India (near Tibet) and involves drums and acrobatics.

I hope this clears matters up.

Coconut Water FTW

This morning I was reading the new issue of Dance Magazine. It features an article on the benefits (and some myths) of coconut water. For those of you unfamiliar with Dance magazine, it's pretty well-written, and their sciency stuff is backed up with reputable experts, although as with any fitness literature, it's certainly not universally true for everyone.

With that in mind, Dance Magazine's conclusions on coconut water are:

• Terrific source of hydration while performing or training
• Not as good as plain water when you're looking for a liquid to consume outside of performance
• Coconut water cannot prevent or cure cancer

Basically, it confirmed exactly what I understood. I first started drinking coconut water during sports after reading the only vegetarian athletic guide I've ever found. (While technically the book is for vegans, the only 'vegetarian' athletic diet books I could find suggested supplementing meals with vegetarian staples like chicken - umm, no thanks).

The book suggested coconut water as a lower-calorie electrolyte-replacement (as compared to gatorade or even regular fruit juice). It also claimed that coconut water is the sports drink of choice for many an attractive South American soccer/football/who cares player. I'm sold!

Even Shiva has Knee Problems

The first piece of my second half, a kriti I think (but don't quote me) called Kalmari Adiya, is not my favourite piece. Don't let that discourage you from coming to my show - it's quite fun to watch. As a dancer, though, it is one of the most demanding pieces for balance and strength because it's about Shiva and full of his poses. Shiva: the God of destruction, original Lord of the dance, and a bit of a pothead[1]. He's also father of Ganesha and Muruga, and husband of Parvati, and sancho (Hola Oscar!) of Ganga.

Complete with fire, drum, snakes, moon, and crushed dwarf

Shiva is one of the oldest deities and is arguably a composition of a bunch of earlier deities that were unified into one[2]. I have a friend who argues that Shiva could be a woman, and it's common to see Shiva portrayed as a hybrid with his consort, Parvati. In fact, the second charanum* of Kalmari, I'll alternate between Shiva and Parvati.

Shiva + Parvati

Shiva is an essential part of Bharatanatyam. At the beginning of every performance, we do a bow to the Nataraja, which is the dancing depiction of Shiva. Shiva also has some of the most striking (and I think best) poses in dance. However, they're pretty challenging, especially when you're tired and you need to hold them for a good 10 seconds or so.

A standard Nataraja as performed in the British Museum

The difficulty of Shiva's dancing poses inspires itself. I guess it's a metapiece. The Pandya king, one of the ancient rulers of Tamil Nadu (then known as 'Pandya Nadu', naturally) was so distraught at seeing Lord Shiva constantly dancing on his right leg that he begged Shiva to switch legs and dance on his left. The Pandyan King, in a typically measured Bollywood response, threatens to kill himself if Shiva does not oblige. Shiva does not disappoint, and kindly switches legs to avoid any potential mass suicides.

Hooray!

Alas, the switching of legs does little for the performer, since you just end up doing most the poses on your left leg, which then becomes sore. However, I would request that the audience refrain from threats of suicide. Instead, please cheer louder for me. I feel that, culturally, obnoxious crowd support is one of the few advantages I have going for me.

As a side note, Susmitha Bhat did a fantastic rendition of this piece in her incredibly awesome arangetram last Saturday in Alabama. My insightful boyfriend, who was watching her performance as well, noted that all of the drama could have been avoided had Lord Shiva had access to foam rollers and a good sports masseuse. I think it's unlikely I'll be including those in my rendition, though.

 *I think it's like a verse, but my Guru gets mad when I project Western musical concepts onto Carnatic musical structure

Impromptu Holiday

This last week was by far the most social week I have had since... probably the New Year. My week was as follows:

Monday: Dance class
Tuesday: Dinner with friends of Ed's visiting from Singapore
Wednesday: Gws-Chix* Dinner
Thursday: Concert of French Hipster Sensation Yelle

Ask Ed for a lovely rendition of Safari Disco Club

I had roughly infinity times the amount of social activity in a week. To maintain sanity, I decided to take Friday off. It wound up not being much of a holiday - I slept in an extra hour, but then there was laundry to do, dishwashers to run, arangetram invitations to coordinate, and 2 hours of abhinaya practice to do. So it was a bit of a let down in terms of what I would normally expect from a 'holiday'. I kept reframing it to myself as an improvement over having to do all that stuff plus a full day of work.

I'm hoping to take at least one more dancing holiday before my interns start and I'm thoroughly chained to my desk. After July 9th, I'm looking forward to taking for realz holidays again.

7 weeks to go.

* 'GWS' is the team I work on at Google, and 'Chix' is an intragroup-appropriate expression for 'women'

Mangozz

Lakshmi berated me today for not updating my blog much lately. So here goes!

These last two weeks I've been having my usual breakfast shakes, but with a slight modification: for realz Alphonso mangos straight from India. For those who have never been to India or had an Alphonso mango, they are amazing. Like pudding in mango form. I thought I didn't like mangoes until I tried Alphonso. They only grow in a small part of india on the west coast. Finding them in grocery stores is extremely difficult - the season is only about a month long, and every Indian person wants them, so they disappear quickly. Last year, though, I learned that I could buy mangoes online.

I'm on what I call a "mango program" provided by the highly reputable-sounding mangozz.com. They pick the mangoes in India, have the USDA inspect them in Bombay, then fly them to Chicago where they are dispatched across the country. I get a weekly shipment of 6 mangoes for 4 weeks. This cost me $185, $50 of which was for the shipping alone.

Carbon Footprint-alicious!

This is the second year in a row I'm ordering them, though last year I split an order with Radha, so this marks a new level of disregard for the planet. BUT THEY ARE SO DELICIOUS!

My babies - delicious, yummy babies

Although delicious, they basically negate all my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint. For instance, being vegetarian saves me about 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year (I eat mostly vegan during the week, so that ups my savings)*. However, the carbon footprint of a person flying from Bombay to San Francisco via Chicago is 3.672 tons. That overhead would be less for mangoes - let's say it's 1/20th. That makes the carbon footprint of my mango order:

CF(mangoes) = 4 * 3.672 tons / 20 = 0.7344 tons

The carbon footprint of 4 weeks of fresh mangoes from India. is almost half the savings of being full vegetarian, 3/4 vegan all year. I am a disgrace. Although I guess this means next year I can get twice as much :)

7.5 Weeks to Go

This evening we had an all-women-of-my-team get together. I discovered that one of my teammates is due to give birth on the date of my arangetram. Another teammate asked her how long she had until then, and she estimated about 8 weeks. I pointed out that it was exactly 7.5 weeks from today.

So in case there was any doubt, this confirms that arangetrams induce more anxiety than pregnancy.

Waking Life

I've been taking my heart rate every morning to figure out what my typical heart rate is, whether I'm over training, and whether I'm getting any fitter. The results for the last three weeks (in bpm):

When I started, I had just increased my weekly volume of dance and I was doing more high intensity practices. After about a week, I seem used to it. What I don't understand are the occasional dips in heart rate. My resting rate is in the low fifties. So what does it mean when it's 48 bpm?

Follow Up to Weekend Burnout

Photo Shoot

Initial photos are up! I'm going to keep most of them under wraps, at least until the invitations are out.

Getting my Saraswati on

The poses themselves were good, but they were pretty low light and there's something smudgy on the lens that occasionally blurs spots. I'm hoping my sister can work some magic to fix all that up.

That soft atheist glow

Overall, I'm really excited to have some pictures. I can't wait to get the invitations done and sent out.


Knee Situation

My knee, which I strained in the photo shoot, is recovering nicely. I took it easy on Monday and Tuesday in terms of dance steps. I've been taking ibuprofen after practice every day this week to prevent any extra swelling and stretching extra diligently (especially quads and IT band), and heating my knee when I get home to keep everything nice and relaxed. Yesterday I visited the doctor and she confirmed that I should keep doing everything I'm doing and didn't object to my continued practices. Great news!

Weekend Burn Out

I originally thought this weekend was going to be fairly relaxed. Gradually, though, it filled up, pretty much entirely. I think this has put my body and my mind on strike.

On Saturday, for instance, I had a lesson scheduled with my student teacher. She's great, but she's a hardass, so I knew it was going to be work. I had arrived at Google a few hours before to get in a warm up and review some pieces before meeting with her. Once I finished my warm up, though, my brain was just not with me. I kept forgetting steps to pieces I had done fine in the last week. I wasn't excited about working on any of my pieces. Basically, I was a bit burnt out. But I have another 9 weeks to go and an hour of torture ahead of me. What to do!

What I ended up doing is possibly the geekiest thing ever, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I should admit something first: since I've been dancing here, I increasingly hear the music I listen to every day as Bharatanatyam music. Initially it was just the very rare song that had beats similar to dance rhythms. Since I've started doing more of the miming stuff and increasing my abhinaya vocabulary, I now see a lot of the songs I like as abhinaya sequences.

To further embarrass myself, here are my top pop Bharatanatyam songs as of late:

• Siren Song by Bat for Lashes
• Share the Fall (Full Vocal Mix) by Roni Size
• Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine
• Triumphant by Röyksopp

So on Saturday, I worked on Siren Song. My vocabulary still has some holes in it, but I'd say I did a pretty good job. It's not quite arangetram material, so for now you won't have the pleasure (laughter?) of seeing it.

By the time I got to class, I was pretty upbeat. We did a non-stop run through of my first half, less the last third of my varnum, which I have yet to learn. It was just over an hour of crazy intense dance. And unlike most practice sessions, it wasn't a non-stop commentary of things I was doing wrong. There were actually several pauses! By Bharatanatyam standards, this is huge.

Sunday I did my photoshoot for my invitations. It was a totally last minute affair - I piggybacked on the session of one of my classmates who had a family friend doing it. Originally my sister was going to take my photos, but she's stuck in New York for the time being. I didn't know until Wednesday that I would be doing it on Sunday, so I had to rearrange my social calendar and move a dinner get together with Le Boyfriend and his visiting cousins to Saturday after the intense dance class. Sigh!

After the photo shoot, my right knee starting hurting. Not cool. I think it was from holding poses on a leg that was just too tired. I had scheduled a massage for today (Monday) at lunch weeks ago, and the masseur ended up doing a really good job of getting my knee loosened up. He also gave me some stretching tips for my quads, which according to him are a disaster waiting to happen. Good to know!

So now I'm writing this with a hop pad on my knee. I'm heading to bed now in hopes that I'll finally be caught up on sleep by tomorrow.

Walk-to-Work Fridays

Pilates on Fridays hasn't worked out so well since I finish at 10am, making me kind of late for work (even by Google standards). Today I tried an alternative means of Friday exercise: walk to work. Remember that I work in SF on Fridays, so we're talking a 3.5 mile walk vs. a 35 mile walk.

This is an attempt to boost my amount low-intensity aerobic activity in a week. The dance conditioning and nutrition books I've been reading explain that dance is a combination of high intensity anaerobic activity and very low-intensity pauses. While these descriptions were geared towards western-style dance, this applies directly to Bharatanatyam. In general, pieces are either combinations of alternating jathis (fast, intense dance sequences) and abhinaya (very low intensity miming sequences), or strictly abhinaya. This scientific model explains why, in spite of excercising for 10 hours a week or so and eating a very healthy diet, I still have a muffin top hanging around my tummy.

As a bonus, Google donates money to charity for every self-powered-commuting days, so I earned some charity $30 for my trip. Awesome!

At 9:15am, I left my house.

Sunny and pleasant: so far, so good

I rounded the corner, and hit Valencia. It was a typical quiet morning, with hipsters waking up to get their morning Ritual lattes and whatever else jobless style fiends do in the morning.

Don't be fooled - it's not all this nice

For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, the Mission (where I live) has a mixed reputation. The part I live in is strictly nice. Houses are well kept, commercial space is occupied. However, the north and east Mission are a different story. Sure enough, I crossed 16th street and BAM! A woman stumbling around with no pants (or underwear or anything covering from the waist down). Good morning!

A few more blocks and I was in the scenic Tenderloin/Civic Center area. This is where I really expect to see the pantsless and stumbly. This morning was pretty tame, though. Nothing unusual to report.

Things don't get rolling here until the strip clubs open

There was a touching moment when a non-homeless guy (I'm stereotyping, but yeah) helped a homeless and disabled guy fix his broken walker. San Francisco is very sweet sometimes. Another couple of blocks and I hit another problem area: Tourist Town.

How do I get to the Hard Rock Cafe?

I quickly dodged over a block to Mission street. There were a few people wandering about trying to find a conference they were attending, but otherwise is was fine. Cutting through Yerba Buena park, I made it over to the SoMA/Financial District where Google is.

A mix of tourists, yuppies with dogs/babies, and snoozing homeless people

The financial district was a bit of a mess with a ton of construction. I think it's for the new transbay terminal. The upside was that there were a lot fewer vagrants than I remember in the neighbourhood. Mostly just shiny buildings with finance-looking people.

I'm glad I work in engineering

Another few blocks and arrive at Google at 10:15am. Exactly 1 hour. Not bad for a 3.7 mile walk.

Dance for Whiter Teeth

I had my first trip to the dentist of the year, and the hygienist commented that my teeth were a lot whiter than they normally are. Was I doing anything differently, she asked? At first I couldn't think of anything - I don't use toothpaste with any real claims of whitening, I don't use the fancy whitening treatments...

Mysteriously Sparkling

Then I realized - I've purposefully dropped caffeine-based teas out of my diet. This is mostly because caffeine is contraindicated in every sports nutrition book I've ever read. I wasn't a caffeine fiend - I typically drank maybe two cups of black or green tea a day. I've known for years that my teeth are particularly bad at picking up caffeine stains, but it was never something that bothered me enough to actively fix.

What a pleasant bonus!